


The smell of candle wax

by TerresDeBrume



Series: Orb & Shimmer [2]
Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Immortals, Long awaited reunion, M/M, Magic-Users, Non Canonical Immortal, Reconciliation, Reunions, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 19:56:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13371972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: Alfred stares at the man who isn’t Drummond for hours, for weeks, for months. He stares until his eyes water and his throat closes. Until centuries vanish and and he’s left watching handful after handful of dirt falling on a coffin.(‘Take a deep breath,’the Duchess said. Now, as then, Alfred obeys without the slightest idea how.)Or: It's been a hundred and seventy-four years since Drummond was shot, and Alfred learned to adjust. Maybe that's why Drummond's return turns out more explosive than expected.





	The smell of candle wax

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so things aren't technically fixed here (though in my defense, this is more of a fix-it _series_ than a fix-it _fic_ ) but at least the things that needed letting out are out in the open. Things get better in the next story, I promise :3

 

“Thanks, enjoy your drink!”

 

Alfred waves the customer away with a smile and steps back to let Murad have a turn at the register. It’s the last Friday of December, and The Garden is all but bursting at the seam with the crowd of strip-tease aficionados trying to press themselves in. Alfred has been working the pre-show shift for the past four years, long enough to work his crowd by now. A flirty smile here, an impish grin there, and people add a pound or two to their bill, tell him to keep the change. Alfred weeds out the occasional phone number, and pocket the tips with a familiar mix of self-satisfaction and wishfulness. Had worldliness been that profitable in his days, he would have taken Mina on a proper world tour. Oh, well. At least it’s paying now, and the thought of that is enough to keep the smile on his face and the spring in his step despite the frenzied urgency of rush hour.

Until, that is, Alfred turns around and sees him.

The man is leaning against the bar, eyes staring at nothing like a model on a photo shoot. The lights overhead wash the sharp lines of his face in dramatic pink, purple and blue, bringing the shape of his lips into focus. Alfred finds himself clutching at the breast pocket of his waistcoat before he’s even aware of what he is doing. The locket is still there, solid in a grounding way, and Alfred presses against it until his fingers hurt. Until he remembers where he is and what is happening.

( _‘I’m afraid you’ll find this very hard to bear,’_ the Duchess said, well over a lifetime ago. Alfred never doubted she was right, but he’d at least have hoped things would be a little easier by now. They aren’t.)

 

People tend to come back, after they die, new incarnations taking on new lives and new purposes. Round and round and round until their cycle ends or the world does. Living as long as Alfred has, and will, makes the recurrence of faces entirely inevitable. He met Harriet, once, during the war. A battlefield nurse who barked orders at him until she decreed her patient stabilised, thanked him, and sent him on his way without any idea who Alfred was. He doubts her name was even Harriet, this time around. Alfred once had his car fixed by a Mr. Penge with an uncharacteristic smile, and watched Queen Victoria herself run around with the Doctor on BBC one for several months. Every one of these encounters left him drained, prone to nostalgia and wistful regret...but it was never like this.

 

He’s never stopped in his tracks quite so hard before, never found himself unable to breathe. It shouldn’t affect him like this. This is how the world works. He should know better. Take it in stride and keep going, no matter what. Instead of that, there is an earthquake in his ears, a storm in his lungs, and fire in his veins. Instead of that, Alfred stares at the man who isn’t Drummond for hours, for weeks, for months. He stares until his eyes water and his throat closes. Until centuries vanish and and he’s left watching handful after handful of dirt falling on a coffin.

 

( _‘Take a deep breath,’_ the Duchess said. Now, as then, Alfred obeys without the slightest idea how.)

 

Alfred snaps back to the present with a snap of Murad’s fingers, and blinks. Hiding tears is familiar, automatic in a way it shouldn't be. The smile is a little harder, but Alfred manages. He’s been mourning in secret so long it’s almost second nature by now.

 

He walks up to the man who isn’t Drummond as if in a trance, left hand still clenched around his locket, and keeps his face cheerful even when the man’s widened eyes pierce at his heart with all the violence of false hope.

 

“G-good evening,” Alfred manages through the stutter he never quite got rid of. “What can I serve you?”

 

By his side, his right hand shivers. He clenches it into a fist and presses it against his thigh. Stretches his smile a little further. It’s only five minutes to the end of his shift. He can get through this. In front of him, the man who isn’t Drummond frowns and looks at him like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. Alfred swallows, and braces himself with the prickle of familiar unease and related annoyance that rise in his chest at the gesture.

 

“I’m not sure yet. What’s your signature cocktail?”

 

The man in front of Alfred cannot possibly be Drummond. Still, the way his words drop on the question, the little furrow between his eyebrows…. Alfred’s stomach contracts, and he gestures at the chalkboard behind him.

 

“Old fashioned,” he pushes out. “Whiskey, angostura bitters and sugar. Served on the rocks.”

 

Brown eyes crinkle with a smile and drive the air right out of Alfred’s lungs. He sets his spine against it, though, and stares ahead. This is nothing but a moment to get through. Like the letter. Lithe the months after. Set your spine straight. Look ahead. Move.

 

( _‘Now, another one,’_ the Duchess says. It still tears at his soul, but this time the shards are smaller.)

 

Alfred stirs sugar and bitters together, shoulders straining not to hunch under the weight of too familiar brown eyes. They follow him around the bar, burning like too hot summer days, and Alfred’s shirt is wet long before he turns around. His lips stretch into the absently playful smile he reserved for particularly difficult courtiers. He presents the drink with a flourish that hides the shiver in his hand, but when he raises his eyes to meet the customer’s, it’s not a satisfied face he finds.

 

Instead, the man’s brown eyes widened, his mouth parted in something that doesn’t quite dare to be a smile. He leans forward, and for a fleeting moment the club vanishes, swallowed by an empty garden in the sun and the smell of pond water.

 

“Lord Alfred?”

 

The memory shatters in a shower of glass behind the bar, Alfred’s knees wet with cold whiskey and sugar. Alfred doesn’t bend down to retrieve it. He stares instead, halfway to a shout. The earthquake is back in his ears, rumbling in his ribs like it’s about to shatter him from the inside, and Alfred struggles to breathe.

 

“I can’t believe it!”

 

Alfred’s lungs fill with dirt, dry and suffocating. His neck aches with the tight scratching of a cravat in unseasonably warm weather. Mina’s arm, around his, is barely strong enough to keep him from tumbling forward into the grave. Now, as then, the world turns red. For a second, the rumble in Alfred’s ears turns to the roar of an inferno, boils under his skin until he could scream from it, tears and tears and tears at his lungs until only the tattered remains of a heart he never have the chance to give away stare at him.

 

On the other side of the bar, Drummond stumbles to the ground in a chorus of shocked shouts. One of his hand tries and fails to keep blood from dripping between his fingers.

 

( _‘Now, I suggest you go to your room and compose yourself,’_ the Duchess says, but this time all Alfred has to lose is a job. It isn’t precious enough to keep him in line.)

 

“My shift’s over.”

 

It’s still three minutes to nine. Alfred throws his towel in the sink and strides out anyway.

 

He bursts out in the street like lava in the sea, December wind going for his cheeks with knives of ice, and finds himself glaring at the passerby hard enough to make a couple step away from him. Alfred’s skin burns against him, presses around his chest like white-hot glass. It is brittle and sharp enough to cut deep if he pulls too hard, and Alfred almost sinks to his knees right then and there. There’s too much excess energy in him though, too much fire to be left alone. Alfred moves before the flames can consume him, long licks of cold slipping under his shirt.

 

Tears and screams of pain war in his throat, cut at it in their haste to leave him, and all that leaves Alfred with it the feeling of raw flesh and hot iron he can’t swallow. Somewhere in the roaring of his ears, the earthquake sounds like his name. Alfred should turn around, but he doesn’t. You don’t turn toward an eruption. You run away, and hope it won’t kill you.

 

Behind him, Alfred’s name rings again, louder. He quickens his pace. People move around him like water around a rock, the occasional irritated groan dying in the face of his expression. Alfred’s fingers ache where they clutch at his breast pocket again, tight enough to damage even the heavy fabric.

 

Drummond is alive. Has been alive for the past hundred and seventy four years. His death cut a wound in Alfred’s heart that never stopped bleeding, and all this time, Drummond chose to stay away. What Victorian soul, after all, would have dared to stop a ghost? Grosvenor place, Buckingham. The opera. All would have been as open to him as a wild wood. The bloody stables at the palace would have sufficed! A letter! A flower! A cigar left on a windowsill! There are millions of ways to leave a message, and Alfred would have noticed any one of them! None came, though. He starts running when his name in a painful voice comes too close to him.

 

A second later, he’s twisting out of Drummond’s grasp, the beginning of a snarl clawing at his throat to get out.

 

Drummond flushes behind the blood flowing from his nose, eyes wide and eyebrows drawn together. Despite this, and despite the way heads turn toward them in the crowd, he doesn’t back down.

 

“Alfred,” he tries again, voice breaking on the second syllable, “listen, I can explain—”

 

“There is nothing to explain,” Alfred all but shouts.

 

( _‘Take a deep breath.’_ )

 

It takes half a dozen lifetimes of training to keep Alfred from turning to run again. Around them, people whisper. Children ask confused questions. December chill bites at Alfred’s skin until he shivers with it. It’s not the reason his voice trembles when he speaks, every ounce of his control pulling his volume in:

 

“You let me think you were gone. Not a visit. Not a word. Not a bloody sign, and now you want me to listen?”

 

Alfred’s voice rose back to a shout by the time he’s done. His hands balled to fists of their own accord, and when one of them twitches forward, Drumon flinches back with a betrayed expression. The blood still running on his chin, splattering against the dove-grey of his turtleneck, gives him a maddened air. It should be scary, on such a tall man. All it does is drag the uglier parts of Alfred to the surface, and it takes physical effort not to snarl when he says:

 

“Don’t give me that look. You don’t have a right to it.”

 

“I—I understand you’re upset—”

 

“Upset?”

 

Alfred’s stomach twists with the thought, mouth too sour for comfort even as the burn of his skin bleeds into his eyes. His throat constricts, strangling his voice when he tries to speak. He’s too angry to let it rest, though, and ignores the pain to push through the block:

 

“You think I’m upset? I had to find out you were dead from the Duchess of Buccleuch, of all people! I had to carry your coffin! I had to go on and pretend I was back to normal because we couldn’t possibly have been—”

 

Alfred’s voice does give in then. There is no word to put there, anyway. No easy way to sum up what Drummond was to him, or what they were together. Alfred chokes and coughs around it, flinching back when Drummond tries to hold his shoulder. There is blood on the right wrist of his leather jacket. The sight makes Alfred choke again, and his chest squeeze.

 

( _‘At the funeral, the chief mourners will be his mother, and his fiance,’_ the duchess told him. As if the constant chorus of ‘poor Florence’ and ‘poor Miss Kerr’ wouldn’t have done a perfect job of carving the heart right out of him on their own.)

 

Alfred breathes in again, the same century-old words echoing in his ears, and makes sure his voice is stable when he says:

 

“‘Upset’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

 

With great effort, Alfred manages to stop his hand from covering his face. As if he’d allow himself that sort of display. His body aches, tired and weary under a weight so thoroughly displaced Alfred can’t ignore it any more.

 

Drummond’s hand on his shoulder burns so hot, even though his shirt, Alfred has to flinch away.

 

“I’m sorry,” Drummond says.

 

His voice is so sincere, it hurts more than it soothes.

 

“I’m sorry we had to go through this—”

 

“You have no idea what I had to go through,” Alfred hisses before the words fully form in his mind. “No idea.”

 

Drummond’s face shifts to pain again, and the burn in Alfred’s eyes spills over his cheeks, boiling hot against his skin. The rest of him burns just as bright, the flames of it failing to stave off the cold spot Drummond’s hand left behind.

 

“You made a choice,” Alfred continues. “You could have put an end to our separation any time you wanted, but you didn’t. You stayed away—you chose to stay away, so don’t you dare pretend our experiences are even comparable!”

 

“What should I have done?” Drummond asks, palms raising to the sky as his expression grows pleading. “Send a letter?”

 

“Yes!” Alfred all but screams. “A letter, a sign, anything! I know you could barely stand the sight of me—”

 

“I didn’t know how to explain!”

 

Drummond’s face as he cuts brings Alfred right back to Ciro’s. He’s sitting at their table, watching Drummond insist he has to break off his engagement, eyes begging Alfred to understand. Back then, Alfred was too concerned with the repercussions to pause. Today, he hurts too much to try.

 

“Alfred, I swear, I never hated you!”

 

“You never even answered m-my letter,” Alfred protests.

 

The stutter would bother him, if only his heart hadn’t picked up its pace again. He finds himself looking up at Drummond, breathless, as he waits to see whether the light feeling in his chest will break his ribs open this time.

 

“I didn’t think it mattered!” Drummond hisses.

 

Alfred can smell the leather of his jacket, and feel the warmth of his breath. He doesn’t move away.

 

“We were in the middle of a session! If I’d waited for a quill and ink, I’d have been late for the debate and I thought—”

 

Alfred must have made some kind of noise. Through the blur in his eyes and the red shape of his fingers, he sees Drummond’s hand move to take his. Pause. Draw back with a twitch of the finger. It doesn’t help.

 

“Obviously,” Drummond continues at a lower volume, “I was wrong. After the funeral—God, Alfred, I don’t know. I was confused and heartbroken but also I was—”

 

Alfred watches Drummond’s throat work on empty air as he pauses, looks away with a clenched jaw. His shoulders tense hard enough to make his jacket creak, and Alfred almost closes his eyes against the sight. Drummond looks back at him then, pleading for a chance. Alfred, too tired for even anger to rouse him, waits for him to continue.

 

“I was terrified. I couldn’t stop wondering what I’d do if I scared you. You’d already called us an indiscretion! What if—what if you’d just—not cared?”

 

“Drummond,” Alfred protests, but this time it’s him who gets interrupted:

 

“I didn’t know! I couldn’t possibly have known! I was alone, without resources, I’d just died! And throughout it all the one thing I couldn’t forgive myself for was failing to answer your invitation.”

 

Alfred screws his eyes shut and swallows around the shards of glass in his throat. Around him, the air smells of candle wax, and the velvet of forget-me-nots tickles against the tip of his nose. His face betrays nothing. He’s too well trained for that. Inside, his heart bleeds, and bleeds, and bleeds.

 

“What would you have said?” He manages. “If you’d answered?”

 

“Nothing short of that bullet could have kept me away from that dinner.”

 

Alfred’s heart explodes. There’s no other explanation for the buzzing in his cheeks. For the burning slide of tears on his face. For the way he sways toward Drummond against his will, like a star sinking into a black hole. Nothing short of the universe restarting can explain this. After a while, though, Alfred breathes in. Cold air rushes into his lungs, fills every crevice of them until it’s like Alfred is discovering parts of his own body. When he breathes out, he has to put a hand on his mouth to keep a sob in.

 

“All this time,” he says once his voice agrees to cooperate, “I believed I’d ruined everything.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Drummond starts again.

 

He stops when Alfred shakes his head.

 

“I regretted the word the second it left my mouth,” he admits. “We were in public. I thought not naming what we talked about would only make it more suspicious. I knew no one would bat an eye if they thought you’d had an affair but I didn’t—I’m so sorry.”

 

Alfred’s eyes drop to the ground again. He breathes, still, in and out. Shaky breaths, yes, but he’s breathing all the same and, after a while, the burn in his eyes fade. His whole body cools down, in fact, leaving him to shiver in just a shirt and a waistcoat over his jeans. Around his neck, the chain of his dog tags grows cold, too, but Alfred leaves it were it is. This cold, at least, he can forget.

 

“I—I’ve had time to get used to it,” Drummond says.

 

It isn’t quite all right, but it’s better than nothing, and Alfred may keep his gaze on his hands, but he nods anyway. He can’t feel his fingers anymore, but this conversation is well over a hundred and fifty years overdue. His fingers can wait.

 

“To be honest, I was more hurt that you tried to dissuade me at all.”

 

Alfred’s eyes snap back up, chest constricting with terrifying familiarity when he finds Drummond’s eyes unchanged even after all these years. The man’s had over a century to think this over and through. He should know better. Yet, here Alfred is, standing in an increasingly deserted street in the very last days of 2017, and it’s as if he were still on his horse, trying to make Drummond understand without words.

 

He could let it rest. Pretend to miss the silent plea for an explanation, and steer the conversation to safer topics. If, that is, they can even find anything in common anymore. Laws, however, aren’t fixed in stone, one way or the other. People like them may have the right to marry in the UK, now, but it might not always be the case. Drummond has lived this long. There is no reason to suppose he won’t live long enough to see public opinions evolve backward. Mortals may not have any ways to kill him but that doesn’t meet he won’t associate with more vulnerable people.

 

“Of course I tried to dissuade you,” Alfred sighs, too tired and too cold to muster urgency. “You were about to ruin—”

 

“Ruin my political career,” Drummond scoffs. “I know. I remember.”

 

“I wish it’d only been your political career! Drummond, you were about to ruin your life! Do you really think the Marquess of Lothian wouldn’t have prosecuted you?”

 

“He was a kind man!”

 

In any other circumstances, the look of offended surprise on Drummond’s face would be amusing. Right now, it’s nothing but another sign of reckless delusion, and Alfred clutches at his chain through his shirt. The rings he keeps with his dog tags dig into his palm, but that doesn’t preven him from saying:

 

“Just because a powerful man is kind to you while you are doing well and behaving as he wants doesn’t mean he will always be.”

 

“Should I assume you’re speaking of experience?”

 

There is venom in Drummond’s tone, but Alfred doesn’t let it stop him. He knew the attack would come, anyway. It’s a justified one, too, if only in some ways.

 

“I may have been on the comfortable side of that spectrum,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean I didn’t see how it worked. Many of my peers were perfectly amicable with their domestics until they dismissed them over something as silly as a creased cravat. Most of them would have severed all contact with me if they’d even suspected I might be gay.”

 

Drummond’s face tightens. His lips pinch, and Alfred raises an eyebrow in challenge, but Drummond simply shakes his head. There is, after all, no denying that particular affirmation. Despite their differing opinions, neither of them is naive enough to try.

 

“Even if you’d avoided trial,” Alfred continues when Drummond stays silent, “people would have talked. You know they would have. The entire court knew you and I were close, what if someone had put two and two together? My family was rich enough that I could have hoped to avoid the worst of the trouble, but you? You’d have been imprisoned. Or worse.”

 

Alfred shivers with the words, chest tightening until it hurts. He crosses his arms over his chest, but steps back when Drummond moves to touch him. Better the cold than a searing brand Alfred can’t expect anything but pain from. Drummond’s face falls again, but he doesn’t insist. Instead, he asks:

 

“You do realize no one had hanged for buggery since eighteen thirty five, don’t you?”

 

“It was still a legal possibility,” Alfred snaps.

 

Sometimes, brilliant people prove themselves so profoundly naive, it’s all Alfred can do not to clutch at his own cheeks in despair. Finding Drummond in their ranks is a rather unpleasant surprise, but he knows better than to voice it. This conversation is loaded enough without resorting to verbal violence.

 

“I never said any of it was fair,” Alfred insists, a plea for understanding sneaking into his voice without his permission. “I know things were less than ideal for anyone involved. I didn’t like it any more than you did! But you were about to gamble your life, and you didn’t even seem to know it!”

 

“I was ready to take the risk,” Drummond says, jaw tightening over the words.

 

“Well I bloody well wasn’t!” Alfred retorts.

 

This time he does hurl the words. Flings them at Drummond fast and hard, until he sees they’ve hit their mark as efficiently as a knife to the chest. This is, after all, the crux of the matter. If Drummond didn’t understand that in the past hundred and seventy four years, it’s high time he did now.

 

Judging by the shocked pain on his face, he does. Good. Now they can have a proper talk.

 

“Are you saying—would you have gone through with it? If you’d been the engaged one?”

 

Once upon a time, Alfred would have blushed at the question. Drummond was reckless and naive, but he was brave, too. Brave in a way Alfred never managed to emulate, despite his best efforts. Once upon a time, the shame of his failure would have been enough to bow his head an apologize. He’s had more than enough time to fortify his reasoning since then. He meets Drummond’s eyes without a hint of a flinch.

 

“Of course.”

 

“...After Scotland?”

 

The pained disbelief is still there, after all of this. Alfred closes his eyes against it, cigar smoke and forget-me-nots filling his nostril until it paints his eyelids with the golden glow of candlelight. His heart beats hard in his chest, and when he speaks there is no telling which Edward Drummond Alfred is talking to.

 

“Especially after Scotland. I couldn’t have endured it if I’d harmed you with my recklessness.”

 

Drummond is pulling away when Alfred opens his eyes. There’s horror in the width of his eyes, the open-mouthed surprise of his features. Alfred’s hand moves forward of its own accord, but he holds it back. There’s no gesture, no caress he can give to soothe that sort of sting. Not now, at the very least. Some secrets come at a harder cost to protect, but they must be kept all the same. Alfred keeps his head high.

 

“Why?” Drummond asks at last.

 

The question is feeble. Strangled. Nothing that expects a true response, except maybe a piece of its own insignificance. That worry, at least, Alfred can soothe, and he does so with a humorless chuckle.

 

“You know what the world was like. Secrecy was the only option.”

 

“That’s not true,” Drummond protests.

 

His words are faint, but his voice doesn’t tremble. On his face, the blood finally stopped flowing.

 

“You always have a choice to reveal your secrets.”

 

“Yes,” Alfred scoffs, “a choice between a modicum of security and the open scorn and hatred of a whole kingdom. What a wonderful alternative.”

 

“Society only ever changed because some people took risks,” Drummond points out.

 

This time, Alfred pushes at his own face until disdain is all he can feel in the fold of his lips. Until scorn and irritated anger take over his voice, and Drummond turns pink before Alfred even finishes asking:

 

“Risks? What risks? You survived a bullet through the heart. You don’t age. I may have been worried by your execution before I knew, but the truth is the only risk you ever had to take was for things to happen later.”

 

“Even if that were true,” Drummond protests, “isn’t that enough of a risk for you?”

 

Alfred snorts, the humorlessness of it underlined by his full body shudder.

 

“We’re immortal, Drummond. We’ll always have later. Others around us do not. You may think it’s perfectly reasonable to make life-changing decisions without consulting, or even warning, those who will be directly affected by it. I don’t.”

 

“As you pointed out,” Drummond retorts with a sizable streak of dismissal in his voice, “you had enough resources to protect yourself.”

 

“It wouldn’t have been protection,” Alfred corrects, “it would have been damage control.”

 

“Oh come on, you had magic!”

 

“And twelve siblings whose standing in the world would have been irreparably damaged by even the hint of an accusation,” Alfred points out, heat creeping back into his veins. “As well as forty-one nieces and nephews. Not to mention, of course, that my parents’ social standing was tenuous, at best, since their elopement. The vast majority of my family was mortal, Drummond. Can you imagine what their one life would have been like if I’d been exposed as a gay trans man?”

 

Drummond’s double take settles on Alfred’s shoulder, pulling at them until they’re all but ready to snap. It presses at his ribs and adds to the cold licks of wind at the back of Alfred’s neck as he waits for the sentence to fall. In the end, though, Drummond’s face settles for a baffled expression before he breathes:

 

“I...I never suspected….”

 

Alfred’s shrug serves to ease the knot of his shoulders as much as it dismisses Drummond’s surprise.

 

“I have small breasts and glamouring powers. Once I learned how to change my voice, passing was easy enough.”

 

There were other problems, of course. Ones magic couldn’t solve. Alfred spent the better part of his life cultivating a reputation for near paranoid demands for privacy, his difference only shared with a very select few people outside his family. Harriet, of course, who knew him before the change. Mina, who turned out not only to be a perfect wife but the dearest of his friends by far. And Louis. One can hardly spend sixty-three years living by someone’s side without opening up about these things.

 

“But,” Drummond starts, shuffling from foot to foot and running a hand over his neck as he speaks, “why come to court, then? Weren’t you worried about rumors? If you were trying to live in secrecy….”

 

“I don’t think behaving like a recluse for the rest of my life would have helped, Drummond.”

 

Alfred snorts in the face of Drummond’s obvious surprise,but doesn’t fight the smirk that rises to his lips after.

 

“Keeping my secret was a hassle, at time, but some risks are unavoidable.”

 

Not attending Christ Church would have raised too many questions. As would have staying at home and depending on his parents’ generosity. The army was not the easiest path, but a career in politics would have brought too much public attention to Alfred’s life. And his skin still crawls with the thought of engaging for priesthood. Overall though, aside from a few close calls and one dreadful afternoon spent with a brooding French prince rather than skinny dipping with Drummond, things could have been much worse.

 

Silence falls over them for a long moment. Alfred left his phone at work, but it must be getting close to ten, by now. The street around them is empty, tourists and local long back to the warmth of their home or the nearest restaurant. The occasional buzz of a car in the next street over is the only noise beside their voices. A lone snowflake lands on Alfred’s nose. He doesn’t move to dislodge it. Eventually, Drummond speaks again.

 

“So...when did you transition?”

 

“The summer I was eight,” Alfred says, unable to hold a fond smile in. “I told my brother Arthur I didn’t want to be a girl anymore. He borrowed clothes from the horse maser’s son, found me a boy’s name, and taught me how to be his little brother.”

 

The entire process took a week, at the most. And then, only because you can’t very well call yourself Alfred without going through the appropriate rituals with the little people living on your father’s estate.

 

“I’d been to London for before, of course,” Alfred continues with a chuckle, “but I was too young to have met many people. Before we returned for the Season that year, my parents asked if I preferred to be Alfred in the winter as well. I said yes. That was pretty much it.”

 

Some people they had to explain things to. The Howards took the whole thing in stride without batting an eyelash. Harriet said she’d rather get tuberculosis than be a boy, but it was all right for Alfred to be one. Alfred’s parents offered the Howards the use of their dancing master, a young wood nymph with a particular fondness for mortal. Alfred’s social transition, for all that it came with a lot of recommendations and years of nightmares about discovery, turned out to be a very smooth affair.

 

“I changed my name after my husband died in twenty thirteen and started testosterone last year,” Alfred continues without regard for Drummond’s surprised flinch. “Probably why you had trouble recognizing me.”

 

Drummond nods and, if he’s trying to be discreet about giving Alfred a once over, fails miserably. He isn’t the first to have this reaction. Whenever Alfred shares his status, people just have to look for hints of the woman he would have been in a different life. The sensation is familiar, but it still makes Alfred’s arms tighten over his chest. It’s becoming harder to stop them from trembling now, but Alfred doesn’t move. He’s come this far in the conversation, hasn’t he? At this point, he might as well see it through.

 

Drummond finishes his inspection. He smiles, then, and it warms Alfred from the inside out. Heat flares in the pit of his stomach, the cooling amber of his fury stroked back to something softer. Sweeter. Alfred’s face flushes with it, and he has to draw a breath in. Reason himself. Now is not the time.

 

“It looks good on you.”

 

Stable voice, Alfred. You can do it. He’s been keeping a composed facade up for a hundred and eighty years. He can go through a few seconds of flustered surprise without squeaking like a prepubescent boy.

 

“Thank you.”

 

There. Perfectly normal voice. Good job, Alfred.

 

“Also, I’m sorry,” Drummond continues. “I understand why you kept it a secret but if I’d known—of course I would have consulted you about the engagement.”

 

This time, when his hand stops halfway to Alfred’s, it feels colder than it has any right to. Alfred doesn’t let the sting in his chest make him forget the important things, though.

 

“You should have consulted me regardless,” he says, “but thank you. I appreciate that.”

 

Drummond’s expression flickers to something unsure, vaguely wounded. For a moment, it’s as if he’s about to apologise. ( _‘You don’t want to hear about that, do you?’_ )

In the end, though, he tilts his head in concession, and Alfred doesn’t have to curse his own stupidity.

 

“Can I ask you something personal?”

 

Alfred nods, and braces himself for a question about his surgical history.

 

“Do you think you’d have told me? Eventually?”

 

“Much sooner than ‘eventually’,” Alfred replies with a pleasantly surprised chuckle. “I was planning to hint at it, in Ciro’s.”

 

Drummond breathes in, sharp and loud in the empty street. He takes a step closer, and something like the sea crashes in Alfred’s ears, his heart racing against his ribs. Then his breath picks up like the wind before a storm, and they are not in the chilly street anymore. They are on their balcony in Buckingham Palace, and at the opera where Alfred once cried and found himself presented with a handkerchief rather than derision. They are near a chilly stream in France, and in the woods of Scotland, so close Alfred can feel the heat of Drummond’s skin against his even though their clothes. They are everywhere and nowhere, in a thousand places and a thousand moments that could have changed the course of their friendship. They are in a thousand moments and a thousand places, and Alfred’s heart roars in his chest, wanting, wanting, wanting, as powerful and relentless as the sea.

 

He takes a step back, lips still burning with Drummond’s breath on them.

 

“Obviously, that didn’t go as planned. And then you had to go and get shot.”

 

“That,” Drummond says with a shiver in his voice and his eyes lower on Alfred’s face than they need to be, “wasn’t very smart of me.”

 

Alfred’s lips twist into a bittersweet smile even as he shrugs. It wasn’t smart at all, but then again, it was hardly Drummond’s choice. He’s about to say as much when a cold gust of wind rushes through the street and drags an impressive sneeze out of him. He rubs at his upper arms with a shiver, but at this point the battle is already lost.

 

“Alright,” he manages, forcing his tone into brisk casualty, “well that was an interesting conversation, but I think I’ve had enough of standing in the cold for now.”

 

The sneeze is a reflex, more than anything else. A built-in alarm to let his species know they’ve been there too long for mortals’ to accept as normal. He can still feel the cold though, and standing in it with only a shirt as protection hardly counts as his favorite activity.

 

Before Alfred can move, though, his gaze catches Drummond’s face, and he freezes. He’s seen this face before, streaked with golden light and the barest hint of wind across his features. Then, as now, it sent his heart racing, chest dilating with an emotion so vast and so strong it almost split Alfred open. Alfred watches Drummond’s eyes move over his face, watches the man’s lips stretch into a bemused smile, and has to put all his strength into resisting the flood of longing coursing through his veins. He refuses to be disappointed when Drummond asks:

 

“Can I see you again?”

 

“Well, I—”

 

“I mean,” Drummond interrupts, almost feverish, “not right away or—obviously, you’ll want time to digest this. To be honest I think I might need some, too. I just—maybe once in a while?”

 

It’s a painful struggle, but Alfred manages to reign in the giant grin trying to break out on his face.

 

“Okay,” he manages with only a slight shiver of anticipation in his voice. “Give me your number and I’ll text you.”

 

Drummond grin is so radiant, Alfred carries the afterimage of it with him for days.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and reviews make me want to keep writing!  
> You can also yell at me [on Tumblr](http://terresdebrumestories.tumblr.com) if you'd like :3


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